Sydney has a number of little known railway tunnels. The oldest one
was built under George Street in 1855 from the Sydney Railway Yard to
Darling Harbour. A gap at Broadway let the smoke from the steam trains of
those days escape. The tunnel is still in use.Another old tunnel runs beneath Jubilee Park at Glebe. It forms part
of the Metropolitan Goods Line which runs from Darling Harbour to
Canterbury. The line was started in 1855 and completed in 1916. As its name
implies, the line is used only for goods and, as no passengers travel on it,
few people outside the railways know of its existence.However, the line was known to thousands of American troops who
landed at Rozelle Bay during the Second World War. A monument in the Rozelle
Marshalling Yards is a reminder of those days.A number of unused tunnels were built in the 1920s as part of Dr J.
J. C. Bradfield's scheme for Sydney's transport. They include tunnels near
Wynyard Station which were used for many years by trams. They are now used
as a ear park under the Menzies Hotel.Short tunnels constructed in the 1920s around Town Hall Station were
built in case the railway system was extended at some future date when
blasting would interfere with normal train operations. The police used one
of these tunnels as a pistol practice range for many years. These days they
are incorporated in the eastern suburbs railway system. In addition to
these, other short tunnels for future extensions were also constructed on
either side of St. James. These tunnels, however, are not used in the
eastern suburbs network.The Circular Quay end of the St. James tunnel was used during the
Second World War as General MacArthur's headquarters before he moved his
operations to Queensland. It is now used by the railways to store trains.
The other tunnel extending under Hyde Park remains unused and tree roots
have grown down into the roof from the park above.Another short tunnel built for future railway extensions at North
Sydney Station also remains unused. Built as the start of a projected
railway extension to Mosman, Manly, Narrabeen and Pittwater, it was
completed about the same time as the Sydney Harbour Bridge which opened in
1932. As much as the railway extensions along the North Shore to Pittwater
have been discussed, they have never been built.

THE CITY CIRCLE

The most familiar tunnels in Sydney are probably those of the City
Circle.Most of them were built by the cut-and-cover method in the 1920s. The
first underground stations, Museum and St. James, were completed and opened
to traffic in December 1926. They were electrified from the outset. This
system was linked to the North Shore when the Sydney Harbour Bridge was
opened in 1932. The City Circle itself was completed with the opening of the
Circular Quay loop in 1956, but until that time turnbacks and crossovers had
been used.The City Circle is a complicated system. In one section there is a
tunnel running on top of another for half a kilometre. Tunnels cross each
other skew-wise at various places. In two Parts there are four tunnels
running side by side on the same level.

Later work for the City Railway which was built mainly by the cut and
cover technique.

For the most part, the route lay through public parks and under the
roadways. The greatest difficulties were encountered where the tunnel had to
pass under building foundations on the section between Central and Wynyard.
On the eastern side of the city, the bulk of the tunnelling between Goulburn
Street and St. James Station was through ironstone clay and shale, with the
sandstone mainly below the middle section of the tunnel. This ironstone clay
was easily worked but had to be closely timbered. The shale was not
particularly hard and lay in blocks cut in irregular directions by narrow
clay seams; however, the clay when wet was most treacherous by readily
allowing the shale to become dislodged and become a load on the tunnel
timbers.

THE EASTERN SUBURBS RAILWAY

The prize for Sydney's most expensive hole in the ground undoubtedly
goes to the Eastern Suburbs Railway which opened in 1979 after nearly a
century of talking, planning, and delay. It cost a total of $168 million.
The tunnels alone cost $50 million and the stations $46 million.The Eastern Suburbs Railways is a ten-kilometre line basically
consisting of seven underground stations linked by
tunnels (Redfern, Central, Town Hall, Martin Place, Kings Cross, Edgecliff
and Bondi Junction); viaducts across two valleys (at Woolloomooloo and
Rushcutters Bay); and one short aboveground section near Woollahra.

City Underground Railway.22 January 1925 (site under Hyde Park- St.
James visible on left, nice Victorian building on current Supreme Court
site).

There are 1.5 kilometres of open-cut tunnels and seven kilometres of
tunnels driven through rock. More than 1.5 million tonnes of sandstone had
to be removed.Australia's most modern commuter line now carries about 60 000
passengers a day or 18 million passengers a year as part of a bus rail
transport system. The idea of a railway serving the Eastern Suburbs has
inspired generations of planners and politicians and sparked off a score of
Royal Commissions and committees of inquiry. Back in the last century, the
Sydney railway terminal was called Redfern Station, which was located on
what today is the southern side of Devonshire Street (Redfern Station, as we
know it, was called Eveleigh). The first proposals for an Eastern Suburbs
line were associated with demands that the rail terminal be extended into
the cit proper. But in those years, and for many years after, Sydney
provided only a quarter of tie population of New South Wales, and the
politicians of the day were aware of what this meant to them. A typical view
was that of John Sutherland, then Minister for Works, when, in 1868, he was
asked to extend the railway from Redfern into the city. Although
representing the electorate of Paddington (where the voters favoured a
railway), he pointed out that the amount needed to build a railway from
Redfern into the city proper would be enough to extend the western line from
Bathurst to Orange.

City Underground Railway. Single Line Tunnel before lining, 2
February 1927.

Sutherland's priorities were borne out by events; the railway reached
Orange in 1877 but did not get to St. James until 1926.Strong opposition came also from powerful country interests and the
first suburban railways could only get parliamentary approval if they formed
part of a line to the country. . .The first suburban railway -fourteen kilometres from Sydney to
Hurstville -was opened in 1884, and two years later it had reached
Waterfall. The Strathfield-Hornsby line was opened in 1886 and extended to
the Hawkesbury shortly after. Both these lines were proposed to parliament
on the basis that they formed part of the Illawarra and Northern lines, but
there was no way in which an Eastern Suburbs line could be part of a country
service. Another limiting factor was the small population of the Eastern
Suburbs-and numbers are important if a city railway is to be viable.In 1871, the boroughs of Paddington, Woollahra, Waverley and Randwick
contained only 11 000 people. Twenty years later, their population had risen
to only 45 000. Waverley, for example, had shown a population increase of
300 per cent to 9000 over the ten Years to 1891, living in 1900 houses. But
only one-fifth of its area had been built on.

The first real attempt to persuade parliament to provide public
transport for the Eastern Suburbs came with a draft bill of 1873 to
authorise the building of a horse-drawn tramway from Sydney station to the
city and to the Eastern Suburbs. This was passed on to a subcommittee for
consideration and there it was lost; the fate of many a proposal over the
years to come. But given the cost-saving option of building a tramway system
to link the city with the Eastern Suburbs, the Government of the day was
quick to seize it.Despite opposition from private transport operators The Tramways
Extension Bill was passed early in 1880. The first line from Liverpool
Street to Randwick Racecourse was opened in 1880, with an extension to
Randwick in March 1881 -the same month as the Darlinghurst-Ocean Street line
came into service. The tramway network gradually spread across the suburbs,
reaching Bondi Beach in 1894, Rose Bay in 1898 and Watsons Bay in 1909.

Despite the success of the trams, a rail link continued to be urged on a
series of reluctant governments. In 1890 a Royal Commission proposed the
building of a city terminal and the extension of four tracks into the city
terminating at Circular Quay, with provision for an extension to the Eastern
Suburbs. But no action was taken, nor was there any action after another
Royal Commission made similar suggestions in 1896.

Central Station was built in 1906 but the agitation for a City and
Eastern Suburbs railway continued, and plans continued to be drawn up and
pigeonholed.Finally, in 1915, parliament approved a proposal for a City and
Eastern Suburbs railway drawn up by Dr J. J. C. Bradfield, the Chief
Engineer of the Metropolitan Railway Construction. This entailed the
building of the present City Circle loop, with provision for a rail link off
this to the Eastern Suburbs via a tunnel beneath the Domain and a viaduct
over Woolloomooloo to Kings Cross. .'There were to be stations at Glenmore Road in Paddington at a site
near Elizabeth Street, Woollahra, Bondi Junction, Waverley, Little Coogee
(near Frenchman's Road, Randwick), Coogee (near High Street and Belmore
Road), Daceyville, Rosebery and Waterloo linking with the Illawarra line
near Erskineville Station.The visionary Dr Bradfield (planner of both the Sydney Underground
Railway and theSydney Harbour Bridge) foresaw an extension from Bondi Junction to
Watsons Bay andan inner loop between Central Station and Daceyville with stations at
Moore Park(serving Sydney Cricket Ground, Sports Ground and Showground), and at
Randwick Racecourse.During the 1920s work continued. on the city railway 'to complete the
Town Hall-Wynyard link in time for the opening of the Harbour Bridge but still
the eastern extensions languished, despite regular demands for the work to
begin. After paying for the city railway, the Governments of the day could
not find the funds to extend the work.In 1947, an Act was passed authorising completion of the City Circle
and railway extensions into the suburbs (including the eastern link) which
provided for a station at Martin Place with the line going on a viaduct over
Woolloomooloo to Kings Cross and eventually to Bondi Beach. Another line was
to go out from St. James via Taylor Square and the Cricket Ground to
terminate at Kingsford, with a further extension from Taylor Square via
Paddington, Woollahra, Bondi Junction, Waverley, Bronte, and Clovelly to
Coogee.Excavations outside Central Station.

Dr Bradfield, designer of the City Railway (centre), with o group
outside Central Station in 1926.

Work proceeded slowly until 1952 when a recession caused the
Government to order a halt. By this time, tunnels had been driven from the
Domain to a point beneath Rowe Street; the Chalmers Street excavation had
been completed; tunnels driven a short distance from a shaft in Prince
Alfred Park; and some of the work at Erskineville and Redfern had been
carried out.In 1962, the Government commissioned a report from overseas experts,
De Leuw Cather and Company which recommended that the line be completed
basically on the earlier route to Bondi Junction thence proceeding to
Kingsford. Nothing was done on this report until 1967 when an Act covering
the proposal was passed and work actually began.In 1976, the Government abandoned the section from Bondi Junction to
Kingsford as recommended by the Urban Transport Advisory Committee and
commissioned a report by an Eastern Suburbs Railway Board of Review. In
November 1976 the Government accepted that Board's recommendation to proceed
with the project with certain modifications to reduce costs. The cost-saving
decisions announced at this time included the elimination of the proposed
station at Woollahra and reduction of station concourse areas at Martin
Place and Bondi Junction.Not all of the work of the planners of the past has been lost in the
development of the new railway. The stations are close to the locations
envisaged by the engineers and designers long ago and the platforms at Tow
Hall Station which handle the Eastern Suburbs traffic were partly built by
Dr Bradfield laid a century ago as part of his city and suburban system to
cater for a new line he envisaged to serve the western suburbs.The Eastern Suburbs Railway was one of the largest engineering
projects ever undertaken by the New South Wales Government.The route was determined to some extent. by the undulating terrain of
the eastern suburbs of Sydney and the need to avoid building foundations and
poor ground material, where possible.Erskineville is where the Eastern Suburbs Railway connects with the
existing metropolitan rail network. The new line descends rapidly down a
ramp (with a grade of 1/32) into twin-box tunnels extending 1.3 kilometres
beneath Alexandria Goods Yard to Redfern Station. These tunnels were
constructed by the cut-and-cover method because of the difficult ground
conditions in this area of water-laden alluvial soil. Extensive sheet piling
was required as this method was used at depths of up to sixteen metres. This
work proved to be very difficult and expensive. Redfern Station platform,
located fifteen metres below ground level, marks the point when it became
practical to use conventional means of drilling and blasting in the
tunnelling works.This method was used in the tunnels from Redfern to the Domain portal
at Woolloomooloo and beneath Kings Cross. Generally, conventional tunnelling
involved full-face firing of a 2.8 round (120 holes and up to two rounds per
shift). Monitoring of ground vibration was necessary in most areas to
protect buildings. The roof of the tunnels was usually supported with four
metre rock bolts. The tunnels were finished with a concrete lining varying
in thickness from 200 to 600 millimetres.The section between Edgecliff and Bondi Junction was formed by the
use of a 179-tonne tunnel-boring machine known as the "Mole". In principle,
the machine consisted of a rotary cutting head pressed on to the tunnel face
by a large hydraulic ram. The 4.5-metre diameter cutting head was driven by
large hydraulic motors and gouged away the face at a rate of two metres per
hour.Equipment involved in these works included rock bolting systems for
roof support, high-speed drifters mounted on hydraulic booms or air legs,
millisecond delay detonators with mains voltage firing, truck mounted
hydraulic drilling platforms, heavy earthmoving equipment such as loaders
and rock buggies, concrete pumps, concrete immersion and form vibrators,
steel formwork and concrete placing systems which allowed lining of the
tunnels at rate of thirty metres per day.

The tunnelling work on the Eastern Suburbs Railway was speeded up by
a tunnel-boring machine appropriately named "The Mole': shown here at the
Woollahra Portal.

Before: An early construction photo showing the excavation beneath
Chalmers Street for the new Eastern Suburbs Railway platforms.

Tunnels are usually wet areas and, consequently, must be drained. In
the Eastern Suburbs Railway network, weep holes were left in the walls and
the water drained to pump chambers located at the lower points of the
system. These chambers up to fifteen metres below sea level have pumps which
are automatically activated as the water level rises. The water is pumped to
the surface and discharged into stormwater drains. During construction of
the line it was necessary to support building footings under the city and at
Kings Cross. One column footing of the State Theatre building located
directly above the crown of the tunnel was underpinned. This necessitated an
inclined drive up to the footing and the excavation of a chamber around it.
Steel beams were installed on each side of the footing on concrete pads
clear of the tunnel and the footing was gradually picked up on needle beams
supported by flat jacks.A more complex effort was necessary at Kings Cross where the track
above the station area was prestressed in order to minimise settlement when
the arches were excavated. The first move was to install heavy steel beams
and columns of flat jacks in the column drives.. The beams were surrounded
in concrete and grout forced between the concrete and the rock. The flat
jacks were pressurised and had the effect of raising the roof level about
six millimetres. The centre arch was then excavated and lined and then the
outer arches excavated and lined. The maximum final settlement recorded at
street level was about 9.5 millimetres and no damage was caused.Further construction problems were encountered where the tunnels
crossed underneath the existing City Circle tunnels just east of Martin
Place. Extensive steel supports were required to prevent subsidence of the
overlying rock which is heavily stressed by City Circle train loads less
than three metres above the new tunnels.

STATION CONSTRUCTION

The construction of the Redfern and Central Stations, located on the
eastern side of the existing railway was commenced in the 1947-52 period. At
that time, the stations were excavated by open cut methods and the steel
frame structures of the stations were erected. When work ceased in 1952, the
steel was left exposed; by 1967 these steel structures had corroded badly
and major remedial work was required.Whereas these stations were excavated from the surface down, the
lower levels of Martin Place, Kings Cross and Bondi Junction Stations were
excavated and lined by tunnelling methods. However, the concourses were
constructed in excavations opened from the surface and are connected to the
platform level by escalator shafts. Since it was not feasible in the Martin
Place and Kings Cross areas to excavate using explosives, the concourse
excavations were completed using large dozers with ripping attachments and
hand-held pneumatic tools.As the station structural works were completed, the finishing trades
moved in. A high standard was demanded in this work through use of mosaic
tiles and various coatings on the walls, suspended moulded panels for
ceilings and floor surfaces of either terrazzo, exposed aggregate or rubber.

This section is based
on the excellent book by Brian and Barbara Kennedy. (Subterranean
Sydney (The Real Underworld of Sydney Town), Reed, Sydney, 1982. ISBN
0 589 50312 X). Copyright Brian and Barbara Kennedy and Reed Publishing.